LESLIE ROBERTS

 

UNDER THE SIGN OF PISCES

LESLIE ROBERTS

THE PURVEYOR OF WISDOM AND FOLLY

BY

BARRY VAN-ASTEN

 

 

The little-known author, Leslie Roberts (1905-1966) is all but forgotten today, but there was a time when he was front-page news! I came across Leslie Roberts while reading Doreen Valiente’s immensely interesting book, ‘The Rebirth of Witchcraft’ (1989) in which she devotes a whole chapter to Mr. Roberts, the only person she knew who ‘set himself up to be a full-time, impartial investigator of witchcraft and black magic’. (1) Information on Leslie Roberts is difficult to find but some clues to his identity are given by Valiente in her book and research has unearthed the following: He was born John Leslie Tudor Roberts in 1905 in Basford, Nottingham (2). His father is William Morris Roberts, a Welsh-man born in 1875 and baptised 4^th October 1877 in Ffestiniog, Wales [he died on 10^th July 1925 in Nottinghamshire]; Leslie’s mother is Hannah Florence Stevenson born in 1878 in Bradford, Yorkshire (3). William and Hannah were married in Cardiff in the summer of 1903 and John Leslie Tudor is the first child born to them; a daughter named Gwyneth Stevenson Roberts is born in 1910 in Basford, Nottingham (4) During the 1911 census the family are living in Hucknall Torkard, Nottingham and William, aged 35 is ‘Colliery underground fireman Deputy’, Hannah is 32, John 6 and Gwyneth is not yet a year old (5).

Doreen Valiente, the well-known witch and author, met Leslie Roberts sometime during 1957-1958 when Leslie sought her out to assist with his research on witchcraft and the occult for a proposed book he was writing. She describes him as a ‘most entertaining conversationalist, cheerful and by no means sinister. He made no secret of the fact that he was homosexual, at the time when this was still illegal in British law.’ She goes on to say that he was ‘small in stature, with thick, dark, wavy hair and dark eyes’ and ‘always dressed very smartly’. Valiente paints a portrait of a stylish, somewhat old-fashioned and well-mannered man who was ‘born under the sign of Pisces’ (19 February- 20 March) – ‘he always wore a large ring with an amethyst, the birth-stone of Pisces, set in silver. He was fascinated by the occult in all its forms and travelled the world in search of knowledge and experience.’ Leslie wrote two novels both published by Fortune Press, the first, ‘Shepherd Market’ in 1937 and the second, ‘Feathers in the Bed’ in 1944; a review for ‘Shepherd Market’ appeared in a Nottingham newspaper under the title: ‘New Notts. Novelist’, which called it a ‘lively story that opens with a picture of Goose Fair’; the review goes on to say that it is a tale of ‘youth and its responses to the calls of modern life’ which ‘form the theme of a brilliant first novel, published to-day, entitled “Shepherd Market”, by Leslie Roberts an author who formerly resided in Mansfield (The Fortune Press, 7s. 6d.) His residence there has furnished him with some of the material for his story, which is that of a boy born in “Maidensmeadow, the mighty coalopolis of the Midlands”. The boy is ‘afflicted with the name of Paul Onion’ and ‘clever enough to win a scholarship that lifts him from a back-street elementary school to the dizzy heights of a secondary school.’ (6) A year later Leslie appears in an advert for ‘Dr. Cassells Tablets’ – ‘How I Conquered Nerves by Brilliant Young Author – “The strain of my work was too much! – my nerves went all to pieces. But just when things seemed blackest, I found the means of renewing my health,” writes Mr. Leslie Roberts, author of the best-seller ‘Shepherd Market’. “On Dr. Cassells Tablets I began to lose that deadly sense of tiredness and depression. I found myself writing with enthusiasm, sometimes going all night without ill effect. I whole-heartedly advise all men and women to take Dr. Cassells Tablets”. (7)

Leslie was on familiar terms with the publisher of Fortune Press, the strange and slightly sinister, Reginald Ashley Caton (1897-1971) and was even a tenant of his in one of his many run-down buildings in Brighton, probably the dingy flat Roberts was living in in Burlington Street, Brighton when Valiente first became acquainted with him. Valiente provided Leslie with much information on the occult arts and the different branches of witchcraft and its history, but she ‘soon realized that sincere though he was, discretion was not Leslie’s strong point. I sometimes rather regretted that I had told him anything at all.’ (p. 139)

 

THE BLACK MASS ALLEGATIONS

 

A local Brighton association, the Forum Society, had asked Leslie to give a talk on the subject of witchcraft at the Adelphi Hotel in Brighton and Doreen kindly lent Leslie various objects from her collection of witchcraft articles which Leslie had planned to show during the lecture. And so on the evening of Wednesday 17^th December 1958, Leslie gave his lecture. Doreen sat in the audience. ‘The lecture was very well attended, and Leslie began to warm to his subject. He was a lively talker, and the audience found him fascinating. Then he suddenly came out with an amazing allegation. He knew, he said, that a human baby had been sacrificed upon a black magic altar in a recent ceremony at Rottingdean, near Brighton!’ (p. 139-140) This was all new to Doreen and she was as surprised as the rest of the audience! But that was not the end of it Leslie went on to say that ‘at Eastbourne human sacrifices are quite frequent – although I cannot verify them.’ (p. 140) After the lecture Leslie ‘was surrounded by people asking questions’ and Doreen, unable to retrieve her witchcraft items, decided to pay a visit to his flat in Burlington Street the next day only to be confronted by a reporter from the national press asking questions of locals who may know Mr. Roberts; Leslie was not home, he was at the Police station.

The Birmingham Post. Friday 19 December 1958

Representatives of the press had been in the audience at the Adelphi Hotel and could not believe their luck which is how the story exploded the following day [Thursday 18^th December] when it made front page of the Brighton Evening Argus with the headline: ‘Police Probe “Black Magic Murder”’. The reporter from the national press gave Doreen a lift to the Police station which was also filled with reporters and so Doreen left without seeing him and returned home. When Leslie returned home from the Police station he gave a press conference in his flat and he ‘added a significant comment: “we don’t know it is murder. The child could have been stillborn.”’ (p. 142) The story appeared on front pages and in small columns alike throughout the country – ‘‘Black Magic’ Murder of Baby Alleged’ ran The Birmingham Post of Friday 19^th December, which went on to say: ‘Mr. Leslie Roberts, a writer on occult subjects, claimed last night that he had given Brighton police two important clues to a house in Rottingdean where he alleges, a baby was murdered as a sacrifice during a “black-magic” ceremony. Mr. Roberts of Burlington Street, Brighton, spent four hours with police after the Chief Constable, Mr. A. E. Rowsell, ordered a full enquiry into the allegation during a lecture to a Brighton debating society on Wednesday. The Chief Constable said earlier yesterday that detectives spoke to Mr. Roberts recently and he mentioned the matter, “the officers could find no corroboration of the story, which was dismissed as being fantastic” he said. “Now that Mr. Roberts has made a public statement the matter will be treated seriously. If his reports are true there has been a murder in this town”. Detectives interviewed Mr. Roberts for an hour at his home yesterday. He then spent three hours at Brighton Police headquarters making a further statement. He said afterwards: “I have asked for police protection in case my life is threatened. I have had vague threats already.”

On page 6 of the Western Mail for the same day [Friday 19^th December], under the headline: ‘Baby Sacrifice: Man is Threatened’, Mr. Roberts is described as a ‘firm believer in the activities of a Coven of “Witches” near Brighton who practice Black Magic rites’. The article goes on to say that ‘Mr. Roberts showed me bundles of notes on Black Magic which he claims will help the police’ and that the ‘murder was committed at a “Black Mass” just before Halloween night on an “altar” in a private house. “It was an authentic human sacrifice”, he said. “Human sacrifices at Eastbourne have been described to me as frequent. But I cannot verify that,” he added. Mr. Roberts told me that he had not been able to give the police an address where the sacrifice of the baby had taken place. “We do not know it”, he said.’ The Western Mail reporter also states that ‘Mr. Roberts claims to have attended a witches’ meeting at midnight on Chanctonbury, a lonely clump of beech trees atop a hill on the Downs.’ Strangely, the reporter states that he had spoken to the Chief Constable and was told that ‘a few weeks ago my officers were making inquiries into another matter and interviewed Mr. Roberts. In the course of general conversation he started talking about Black Magic. He said he was writing a book on the subject.’ Whether or not this ‘other matter’ existed or is just evidence of unreliable reporting is unknown. In another report from the Daily Herald (Friday 19^th December 1958. p. 7) after confirming that the Chief Constable, Mr. Albert Rowsell ordered a full-scale inquiry on Thursday 18^th, Leslie is wrongly stated as being ’43-years-old’, he was in fact, 53 years old, and described as a ‘student of witchcraft’. Mr. Roberts said earlier that ‘within the last fortnight an unspeakable blood sacrifice of a new-born baby was part of a ritual in a house in Rottingdean’, he goes on to say that ‘the facts have been put to the police but they are doing nothing about it. I am under police protection and I have received threats.’

The next day the newspapers continued the story, dismissing the whole affair – ‘No Baby Sacrifice’ declared the Daily Mirror (Saturday 20^th December 1958. p. 4) which states that the ‘Police Chief [Mr. Albert Rowsell] said yesterday that there was “no substance” in an allegation that a baby had been sacrificed during “black magic” rites in a house in Rottingdean.’ The article ends with Mr. Roberts reply to Mr. Rowsell’s statement – ‘This is nonsense. The police can’t dismiss it like that. I am going to see them with some more information.’ And in Eastbourne, the Eastbourne Herald Chronicle (Saturday 20^th December 1958. p. 24) had a little more to say on the subject (I shall quote the complete article) – ‘Rumours that black magic and occult practices were being carried out in Eastbourne were yesterday firmly refuted by the Chief Constable, Mr. R. W. Walker, who told the Herald Chronicle, “I am sure there is nothing in it”. The rumours started after Mr. Leslie Roberts, a writer on occult subjects, told the Brighton Forum Society that a baby had been sacrificed on an altar during a Black Mass in a private house in Rottingdean. Brighton Chief Constable, Mr. A. E. Rowsell, immediately ordered a full inquiry into the allegation. Mr. Roberts told his Brighton audience on Wednesday that this was the first information in recent years of human sacrifice that he had cause to regard as authentic. “But I have heard that at Eastbourne human sacrifices are quite frequent – although I cannot verify them,” he is reported as saying. Mr. Roberts said that professional people were known to have taken part in pagan practices. The Vicar of Eastbourne, the Rev. W. W. S. March, said that he had not heard anything about the matter. Other church leaders and members of the Spiritualist Church has nothing to do with black magic although we do hold séances. I do think that there is a very strong black magic influence in Britain, but not in Eastbourne,” a Spiritualist told the Herald Chronicle.’ (8)

And so the story was dropped and Doreen was able to retrieve her witchcraft items, but to the end of his days, Leslie swore that the story was true. In fact, not long after the story became old news, in March 1959, Leslie ‘discussed the case in the course of an interview he gave to Philip Paul, a reporter for the Spiritualist weekly paper Psychic News. Talking to Mr. Paul in a Drury Lane coffee-bar, Leslie claimed that in spite of the official denials the police were still investigating this and other matters relating to black magic’. (p. 142) He also said to Philip Paul that ‘the baby who was the alleged victim of the black magic sacrifice was in fact a three-month foetus. He confirmed this to me afterwards, saying that the child had been aborted and that this pitiful scrap of humanity had then been used as an offering to Satan in the Black Mass.’ (p. 143)

Doreen appears to have been dubious of the story until some research into actual abortions used in Satanic ceremonies seemed to convince her that there may have been some truth to the tale – ‘a child which had been aborted might even be preferred to one which had been born in the natural way.’ (p. 144) The life-force of the child is still pure: ‘it is “virgin” because the creature has never lived in the normal sense, yet it has been alive’. (p. 144)

 

INITIATION

 

‘Leslie’s love of travel had led him to take a job as a waiter in the first-class dining-rooms of luxury liners.’ (p. 154) Doreen had mentioned a New Zealand born witch and artist named Rosaleen Miriam Norton (1917-1979), known as the ‘Witch of King’s Cross’ (King’s Cross, Sydney, Australia, not London). Leslie was enthusiastic to meet Rosaleen and took the opportunity to visit her in Australia in 1959 at her home and temple at 179 Broughton Street, Darlinghurst, Sydney. They became firm friends and Rosaleen was probably taken by Leslie’s Welsh background: Leslie ‘believed himself to be descended from a Welshman called Tudor Roberts who was a chamberlain at the court of Henry VIII.’ (p. 156-7) Leslie was initiated into Rosaleen’s coven soon afterwards, a coven which practiced a form of sex magic and whose deities were Pan and Hecate; Leslie would travel to Australia to meet Rosaleen and his fellow coven members whenever the great liners took him there.

 

SYBIL LEEK AND MR. HOTFOOT JACKSON

 

While Leslie was travelling around Britain in search of information for his proposed book on witchcraft he met the ‘self-confessed witch’ and antique dealer Sybil Leek (1917-1982) and her jackdaw ‘familiar’ Mr. Hotfoot Jackson in the New Forest, Hampshire in 1962; they seemed to have got on well together and she was of great help in his research – Sybil Leek’s autobiography ‘Diary of a Witch’ published in 1968 is quite a fascinating read and she mentions much about her acquaintance with the Great Beast, Aleister Crowley, whom she met while a little girl and at several intervals during her life; unfortunately, she does not mention Leslie Roberts.

 

DARK, SATANIC SUSSEX

 

During Aleister Crowley’s final years at Hastings in Sussex a string of visitors made their way to see the ‘wickedest man in the world’ and the prophet of the new aeon and a community of occultists grew up around the area; Crowley’s death in 1947 and the notorious ‘Last Rite’ reading of ‘The Hymn to Pan’ at his funeral in Brighton sparked darker interests in Sussex. But Sussex seems to have been beset with occultism. Valiente mentions the mysterious voodoo priest Rollo Ahmed (1899-1958) the author of the book ‘The Black Art’ who lived in Hastings and had an ‘active magical circle in Brighton’ (p. 139) between the wars; Ahmed was friends with the occult author Dennis Wheatley and Aleister Crowley and Valiente goes on to say that ‘some of Ahmed’s old students and followers were still in Brighton at the time of which I write and still performing their rituals. These sometimes involved blood sacrifices, usually of a cockerel.’ (p. 139)

Another active occultist in Sussex during the 1940’s and friend of Aleister Crowley was Lord Evan Tredegar (1893-1949) who was very fond of performing the Black Mass. In his hugely fascinating book ‘The Dust Has Never Settled’, Robin Bryans (1928-2005) mentions a twelve year old boy who had been murdered near his home in Rottingdean during the 1970’s, ‘close to where I had seen Evan Tredegar in 1944 perform his black mass’. (9) Tredegar seems to perform the mass at the drop of a hat and his occultist friends, the artist Sir Francis Cyril Rose (1909-1979) and Archdeacon John Herbert Sharp (1888-1950) would also assist, their favoured site being St. Wulfran’s Church in Ovingdean; Tredegar gave ‘parties for young sailors at Roedean and had pressed them into black mass sessions down the hill at Ovingdean where Peter [Harrison] and I now sat doing the crossword, trying not to get involved with Aleister Crowley’s devotees coming to light candles and leave other relics of their devotions.’ (10) Rodean girls’ School was taken over by the Admiralty in 1941 from the War Office and it became known as HMS Vernon, a training school for the Royal Navy. Tredegar seems to have treated the place as his playground and made no secret of his nocturnal activities and Bryans tells us that ‘many celebrants used a chalice set inside a human skull for their communion cup, although various ingredients, apart the essential blood and semen, could be used.’ (11) Many of the sailors were drugged when drinking the communion wine; one such sailor was Jack Dover Wellman (1917-1989) who took part in the Black Mass and went on to become a priest (he was the Reverend at Emmanuel Parish Church, Hampstead from 1956-1989); Wellman who was interested in the occult became friends with John Symonds, who wrote ‘The Great Beast’ biography of Aleister Crowley. Wellman also published two books: ‘A Priest’s Psychic Diary’ in 1977 and ‘A Priest and the Paranormal’ in 1988. It is interesting to speculate whether Leslie Roberts was aware of these black masses or even took part in them!

The author, Robin Bryans, aged just 16, first visited St. Wulfran’s Church in 1944 with the M.P. and friend of Aleister Crowley, Tom Driberg (1905-1976) and Rev. Thomas Frederick  Charlton. Bryans mentions his young friend Peter Harrison a soldier who had returned from the war blind and paralysed and was living at St. Dunstan’s, a blind veteran’s home in Ovingdean, and feeling sorry for him, Father Charlton and Bryans decided Peter should have some recompense for his loss, and so ‘Peter was lifted onto a makeshift bed in Ovingdean Church to make love with the actress [a friend of Enid Bagnol the playwright who lived at North End House in Rottingdean since 1923]. Father Charlton was triumphant. He and I thought it little enough compensation for the war damage to a teenager’s life.’ (12) In fact, when it came to sexual practices it seemed anything goes and there was a deep level of involvement within the church – ‘Driberg knew what Aleister Crowley did in Ovingdean Church but his friend, Peter Anson had much earlier, in 1964, published in Bishops at Large, descriptions of the homosexual clergy in those High Churches.’ (13)

I’m sure, whether Leslie was involved with rituals or not he would have been fascinated by it purely on account of research for his proposed book on witchcraft (the book never did get written and Valiente inherited all his notebooks), just as the mysterious ‘black magic gang’ cases and church desecrations in Sussex during 1963-64 would have been worthy of his investigations. The first of these cases occurred at the village of Westham, near Pevensy on Saturday 7^th December 1963 when a ‘gang of Black Magic devil worshippers’ broke into the 12^th century church and ‘held an orgy’ before they ‘fought a battle with the 79-year-old vicar, his churchwardens and other parishioners.’ The four Satanists ‘lit candles from the church altar laid them out on the chancel floor in the shape of a cross and stood chanting as they performed their evil rites.’ They were discovered by the bellringer, Walter Binsted who rushed to the village school next door which was holding its Christmas bazaar to call the vicar. The vicar, Rev. Harold Coulthurst of Westham said ‘the men were trying to communicate with evil spirits. They were chanting some sort of mumbo jumbo.’ “Someone had spat on the altar cross and when I tried to restrain them they lashed out and there was a fight. We were no match for them.”’ He added that ‘they were definitely in league with the devil. The incident was most distressing and alarming.’ During the fight, one of the churchwardens, Capt. Leo Hayden, aged 65, had his glasses broken! (14) The ‘devil worshippers’ escaped in a waiting car.

The next case occurred soon afterwards and possibly by the same ‘black magic gang’ when on Sunday 5^th January 1964, the Rector, 76 year old Rev. Ernest Streete arrived at the church to find a heavy stone cross ‘ripped from the graveyard’ and propped against the main door of St. Nicholas Church, Bramber and ‘Black magic signs were chalked on the flagstones of the church porch.’ Also, ‘stone figures of angels taken from graves around it, flung, heads smashed.’ (p. 148-9) The Rector ‘pronounced a solemn curse upon the defilers of his church’ (p. 149) and in a newspaper article believed that the ‘curse worked. Stone put back and vandals have repented’ but actually it was a Police officer, saying “I can’t understand why he said the vandals repented. Three of us put back the cross on Sunday evening.’ (15)

The gang struck again and this time were even bolder as three churches in one night were targeted – ‘Headstones and crosses were torn from graves in “Black Magic” raids on two Sussex churchyards early yesterday [Sunday 26^th January 1964]. And at a third church two sheep’s hearts were found on a tombstone.’ The Rector of St. Michaels’s Church, Newhaven, Rector, Rev. R. G. G. Hooper ‘found headstones propped against both doors.’ It took four policemen to remove one of them and occult symbols were ‘scrawled on the door in coloured chalk’. At Alfriston Church (8 miles away) there were similar ‘chalk signs’ and two stone crosses were ripped from graves and leaning against the door. At nearby Jevington Church there were ‘chalked signs on gravestones – and the two sheep’s hearts. Police said, “the signs in each case were in yellow, pink and blue chalk.’ (16) But there was to be a final attempt before activities quietened down and this occurred on Friday 13^th March 1964 when Police set up a ‘black magic patrol’ to prevent a ‘midnight Black Mass in the graveyard’ after a parishioner was ‘tipped off that a “devil worship” ceremony was being planned in the graveyard of the Priory Church at Christchurch, Bournemouth.’ Four men were seen wandering around the church’s Lady Chapel ‘carrying pieces of cloth which had circles embroidered on them with crosses in the centre.’ When they were challenged by the verger, Mr. C. H. Stickland they ran off. At midnight, police and church officials were hiding in the graveyard as the gang drove up; a torch-flash signalled the police and the patrol swooped upon the gang who managed to escape into their cars and made off. The Police went back into hiding and ‘two hours later another group of men was seen creeping through the graveyard.’ The police pounced but again, the gang escaped over a church wall. (17) Sybil Leek, in her ‘Diary of a Witch’ (1968) says she knew the identity of one of the ‘devil worshippers’ involved – ‘In 1960, in the early evening, a man came to my door. I recognized him as a well-known leader of a Black Magic group operating outside London. A mathematician, a man of high intellect, he was devoted to Satanism. It is a mistake to think that Black Magic groups are not practicing in this day and age. British newspapers frequently carry reports of churches which have been defiled, of Black Magic symbols being left on church doors, and of graves being broken into. The man who was responsible for many of these weird happenings was my visitor.’ (18) The Satanist, who was a sick man, had come to Doreen wanting her to heal him but she would only do this on one condition – she said to him: ‘I know you are responsible for all the outbreaks of Black Magic on the South Coast. If I agree to help you, whether I succeed or fail, I want your promise that none of your people will come to the New Forest.’ (19) The devil worshipper agreed to her terms!

 

AN EXORCISM

 

In the spring of 1963 Leslie received a letter from a farmer and his wife who lived in the North of England at a remote farm saying that for years they had been troubled by strange disturbances at their home and that the farmer’s wife was now suffering some sort of spiritual attachment, haunted by an evil spirit. Leslie, with his best intentions decided to try to help the couple and so he travelled to the location by rail and road and moved into the farm to investigate the haunting. The wife told him that she had been to a number of Spiritualist healers in London but to no avail and she continued to suffer from mysterious aches and pains and a sense that some dark entity was obsessing her. She said how she had seen a tall, dark figure approach her outside the farm and how she screamed and fled indoors; since that occasion she began hearing a man’s voice speaking to her and there were unexplainable noises in the house at night. This was of course all music to Leslie’s ears who would have been carried away with solving the case. He held a séance with the family and discovered that the farmer’s wife had mediumistic abilities and fell into a trance – Leslie decided he would attempt an exorcism. It is not known whether he was skilled enough to perform such a ceremony but it is highly unlikely his knowledge was anything more than theoretical. Suddenly, the wife confessed to Leslie that she didn’t want the spirit exorcised as the entity gave her intense ‘”sexual sensations” which no man could produce.’ (p. 161) Her husband it seemed was completely unaware of his wife’s sexual pleasure at the unseen hands of a ghost and it was the husband who had requested Leslie’s assistance. Leslie realised that the sexual encounters were the product of an Incubus and he decided to go ahead, perhaps unwisely, with the exorcism. He probably realised he was out of his depth but nevertheless he went on with the ‘prolonged struggle’ and the entity spoke with a man’s voice and declared it had been hanged. The exorcism seemed to have had a definite effect on Leslie’s health and he felt ‘very cold – as if, he said, some of the chill of that bleak, harsh countryside had entered into him.’ (p. 161) In fact, he felt he had contacted ‘real malignant evil’ and soon after his health deteriorated; he was warned by his doctor that he had heart trouble and for the last years of his life (he was living in a flat at 56b Church Street, Brighton) the problem became worse. But Leslie continued his investigations into the occult. In 1965 Leslie met another well-known witch – Patricia Crowther and her husband Arnold. The Crowthers were visiting Doreen Valiente at her home, 6 Tyson Place, Grosvenor Street, Brighton when Leslie came round one evening ‘for a chat about the current occult scene. We were sitting round the table’ writes Patricia, ‘when I happened to glance at Leslie, and what I saw I will never forget. Directly behind him a fearful apparition had appeared. It wore a cowl, draped over a skull – a death’s head – and had bat-like, leathery wings outspread.’ (20) It seemed Leslie was a haunted man and perhaps a doomed man also! On 7^th August 1965 Leslie took part in a ouija board session at Doreen’s home with the Crowthers and the spirit of Gerald Gardner came through requesting his picture be mended and hung back on the wall – Arnold Crowther repaired the picture and it was hung up once more. (21) The following year Leslie died of heart disease in a Brighton Hospital aged 61 in early 1966. (22)

Because he was such a good-natured man, always willing to assist those in need, Valiente believed he was the victim of ‘psychic vampires’ draining his energy – he did not like to say ‘no’ to someone he felt he could help, poor, unfortunate cases who sometimes took advantage of him – ‘he continued to the end of his life to let people impose on him; and I believe his life was shortened as a consequence.’ (p. 153) In fact, ‘on several occasions his flat was burgled by so-called “friends”’ (p. 154) and even his precious amethyst ring was stolen!

 

‘Some of his friends and I gave Leslie a pagan funeral, scattering his ashes upon the Sussex Downs in a peaceful spot under a spreading oak tree. We kept it secret from any interest by the media.’ (p. 162)

 

 

NOTES:

 

1. The Rebirth of Witchcraft. Doreen Valiente. Robert Hale, London. 1989. p. 137. [Chapter 9: ‘Leslie Roberts, Investigator’ p. 137-161] All quotations The Rebirth of Witchcraft, unless specified.
2. Birth Registration for England and Wales. January-March. 1905. Basford, Notts. 7b 257.
3. Hannah Florence Stevenson, born 1878, Bradford, Yorkshire, 9b 226. She died in January-March 1951 aged 72 in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, 3c 210. She married William Morris Roberts in Cardiff in July-September 1903, 11a 742.
4. Gwyneth Stevenson Roberts, born July-September 1910, Basford, Notts. 7b 284.
5. 1911 Census for England and Wales. Schedule Type: 233, Page Number: 1, Registration Number: RG14, Piece/Folio: 469.
6. The Nottingham Evening Post. Thursday 9^th December 1937. p. 7.
7. Belfast Newsletter. Thursday 8^th September 1938. In the same year, there is an article written by Leslie in the Aberdeen Press and Journal. Tuesday 13^th September 1938. p. 1. ‘Money Makes Happiest Marriages says Leslie Roberts, the young author of the best-selling novel “Shepherd Market”’.
8. Some further newspaper sources: West Sussex Gazette (Wednesday 25^th December 1958. p. 4), Liverpool Echo (Friday 19^th December 1958. p.1), Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail (Thursday 18^th December 1958. p. 10), Aberdeen Evening Express (Thursday 18^th December 1958. p. 9), Torbay Express & South Devon Echo (Friday 19^th December 1958. p. 1), Shields Daily News (Thursday 18^th December 1958. p. 16).
9. The Dust Has Never Settled. Robin Bryans. Honeyford Press. London. 1992. p. 65.
10. ibid. p. 123.
11. ibid. p. 129.
12. ibid. p. 124.
13. ibid. p. 171.
14. The People. ‘Black Magic Gang in Battle at Altar’. Sunday 8^th December 1963. p. 1.
15. Daily Mirror. ‘Rector: My Curse Worked but Police say we repaired the damage in the graveyard’. Tuesday 7^th January 1964. p. 5.
16. Daily Mirror. ‘Gravestones Ripped Up in Black Magic Raids’. Monday 27^th January. 1964. p. 17.
17. The People. ‘Devil Gang Drive into Tombstones Ambush’. Sunday 15^th March 1964. p. 10.
18. Diary of a Witch. Sybil Leek. Prentice-Hall, inc. Englewood Cliffs, N.J. 1968. p. 91-92.
19. ibid. p. 93.
20. One Witch’s World. Patricia Crowther. Robert Hale. 1998. p. 88.
21. see Doreen Valiente Witch. Philip Heselton. The Doreen Valiente Foundation and the Centre for Pagan Studies Ltd. 2016.
22. Death Record for England and Wales. John Leslie Tudor Roberts. Brighton. April-June 1966. 5H 101.

Leonard Green

FRAGMENTS FROM THE FRINGE

LEONARD HENRY GREEN CBE (1885-1966)

BY

BARRY VAN-ASTEN

Leonard Henry Green is known to certain literary enthusiasts as the author of two uranian works of prose – ‘Dream Comrades and Other Prose Sketches’ (Oxford. Blackwell. 1916) and ‘The Youthful Lover and Other Prose Studies’ (Oxford. Blackwell. 1919); others may well know of his friendships with T. E. Lawrence and Dorothy L. Sayers. The author, Donald Weeks met Leonard Green at the Reform Club in 1960 for luncheon to discuss aspects in the life of Frederick Rolfe for Weeks’ biography ‘Corvo: Saint or Madman’ (1971); Weeks tells us that ‘the late Captain Leonard Green’, one of Weeks’ correspondents, was ‘an invaluable source of information. A nephew of a brother-in-law of John Addington Symonds.’ He also tells us that Green was familiar with other uranian writers, Charles Kains Jackson, (Green became executor after his death) and John Gambril Nicholson, as well as Edward Carpenter and Theodore Wratislaw. (1) I shall come back to the ‘nephew of a brother-in-law’ link to Symonds later. This is not intended to be an in-depth biography of Green but rather a collection of information I have researched and extended upon, perhaps for future investigation. In researching Leonard Green there were some initial doubts as to his parents, doubts which faded after several factors were confirmed: (a) I could find only one birth for Leonard Henry Green during the year 1885 in England; (b) the great Timothy d’Arch Smith gives us some tantalising glimpses into Green’s life, such as his being a Captain in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment amongst other things in his facsimile edition of ‘The Quorum: A Magazine of Friendship’ (2001); (c) Green’s entry in the Oxford University Register, St. John’s College, gives his father’s name, (d) the 1911 census entry stating Green is a ‘lecturer at Saltley Training College’ in Warwickshire and (e) the pivotal connection of photographs [one showing Green in his Royal Warwickshire Regiment uniform] and documents relating to Green and Saltley College donated to the University of Gloucester in 1988 by Green’s niece, Mrs. Mary Wakefield (2).

Leonard Henry Green was born on Thursday 8^th October 1885 in Birkenhead, Cheshire and Christened on 10^th November that year (St. Mary, Liscard, Cheshire). His parents are John Theodore Green, (3) born in 1852 at Normanton-le-Heath, Leicestershire (baptised 25^th July 1852. He died on 30^th October 1947 in Wales), and Florence Anne Frances Green, nee Christian (daughter of Samuel and Frances Emily Christian, born Cambridge and christened on 24^th February 1853-1943) (4); they were married in December 1882. After Leonard’s birth in 1885, three years later a sister was born named Constance Marjorie Mortimer Green, born on 4^th June 1888 and Christened on 1^st July that year at St. Saviours, Oxton, Cheshire. Constance went on to study art at the Liverpool City School of Art, the Byam Shaw and Vicat Cole School of Art and the Cheltenham School of Art. She became quite a fine painter of landscapes and later lived in Cheltenham; she never married and died in Exeter in 1981. In 1891 another child was born: Valentine Christian Green, born on 14^th February 1891 and Christened at St. Saviours, Oxton on 15^th March 1891. Valentine’s Military service began in 1909 when he was 18 years old; he was in the Cheshire Regiment, 4^th Battalion and the 2^nd Battalion Duke of Wellington Regiment and served in Africa, India and Jamaica. During the First World War, Valentine was in the West India Regiment 1915-16 and in The London Gazette on Friday 6^th April 1945 he is recorded as ‘Lieutenant-Colonel (temp Brigadier) Valentine Christian Green (18699, Royal Artillery) is awarded the CBE on Tuesday 10^th April 1945. He married Pauline Mary Heriot-Hill on 29^th December 1917 at St Bede and All Saints, Birkenhead. They had a daughter named Mary Mortimer Green born in Jamaica on 26^th November 1921. Valentine died in Flintshire, Wales in 1971.

In the 1891 census, five year old Leonard is living with his family at 27 Silverdale Road, Oxton, in the parish of St Saviours, Cheshire (the Green family are still there in April 1905). His father, John Theodore Green is 38 and his occupation is ‘cotton merchant’s cashier’. Leonard’s mother, Florence is also 38, his sister Constance is 2 and Valentine is not yet a year old; at the address are two servants.

Ten years later in the 1901 census the Green’s are at Tranmere, Birkenhead in the parish of Claughton Christ Church; his father is 48 and now a ‘cotton merchant manager’, Florence is 48, Leonard is 15, Constance 12 and Valentine is 10; they still have two servants. Leonard was educated at Birkenhead School.

Leonard Green was up at St. John’s College, Oxford in 1904 until 1908; the college register states that he was educated at Birkenhead School and awarded his B.A. in 1910 and M.A. in 1914. It goes on to state that he was a Captain in the 8^th Royal Warwicks, Regt. (TF Res. [Territorial Force, Reserve]) and that he was ‘employed on recruiting duties 1914.’ (5) He was then employed in school and university teaching from 1908-1914. In the 1911 census we can find Green, aged 25, lecturing at Saltley Training College, Erdington, Warwickshire where he began teaching in 1910, remaining until the outbreak of the war in 1914 (6).

T. E. LAWRENCE

Jebail, Syria.

‘Dear Green,

I am on a divan (anglice – an American bent-wood chair) inhaling haschich (a tannery next door but five) and dreaming of odalisques (who were upper housemaids) and bulbuls. Your letter is a breath of Europe and things spiritual and sensual: most comfortable.’ (7)

Leonard Green met the young Thomas Edward Lawrence (1888-1933) in 1904 when Lawrence was a sixteen year old school boy at Oxford High School; Green, who was an undergraduate at St. John’s College, Oxford from 1904-1908 was friends with Lawrence’s elder brother ‘Bob’ – Montague Robert Lawrence (1885-1971) who was also at St. John’s College studying medicine. T. E. or ‘Ned’ as Green called him, struck up a friendship and Green tells us that young ‘Ned’ would visit Green in his rooms at St. John’s College, something which was strictly forbidden. Leonard and the younger Ned would sit in the garden of the Lawrence’s family home at 2 Polstead Road, Oxford, where the family had lived since September 1896, and they would discuss various literary subjects and plans for the future. Green tells us in a volume of reminiscences, ‘T. E. Lawrence by His Friends’ (1937) edited by T. E.’s brother, A. W. Lawrence that they ‘decided that we would buy a windmill on a headland that was washed by the sea. We would set up a printing press in the lowest storey and live over our shop. We would print only rather “precious” books, an essay or two by Walter Pater, Matthew Arnold’s Scholar-Gypsy, a trifle of my own of which Lawrence thought highly, worthy things written by our friends.’ (8) The idea of the ‘windmill printing press’ must have been mentioned towards the end of 1910 as Lawrence writes to Green on 24^th January 1911, gently dismissing the idea, saying that ‘printing is not a business but a craft.’ That Lawrence ‘thought highly’ of Green’s ‘trifles’ is confirmed in a letter which Lawrence wrote to Green on 16^th February 1910, after reviewing something Green had written, Ned writes: ‘please continue pouring: if the rain is to be of this quality. It is something entirely new to me in style & substance: no Pater no Wilde (to speak of…) no anybody.’ (9) It is possible that Green showed some early poems to Lawrence – ‘Green was a poet as well as aspirant printer. Early in 1910 he invited Lawrence’s comments on his verses and was encouraged by the response. Lawrence suggested that Green would not find a publisher easily, but thought that they were suitable material for the projected press. He cautioned Green not to bow to conventional morality and “develop a sense of sin or anything prurient.”’ (10)

WAR AND ERIK

Green joined the Territorial Force, Warwickshire Regiment, 8^th Battalion, who had their Headquarters at Aston Barracks in Birmingham; we find in The London Gazette of 19^th May 1911, Green recorded as being with the 8^th Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment, to be ‘Second Lieutenant’, dated 2^nd March 1911; he is Lieutenant in 1913 and Captain in 1916. D’Arch Smith, to whom we are indebted, tells us that while Green was in the Royal Warwickshire’s he ‘met and fell in love with a fellow officer, Eric (later – pretentiously – Erik) Arnold. Years later, Arnold was to kill himself by throwing himself under a tube-train at Trafalgar Square station (17 April 1951) rather than face prosecution (ironically) on a charge of fare-dodging on the London Underground.’ (11) He was 53 years old when he died. Erik, was born Eric Stennet Arnold on 23^rd August 1897 in Brentford, Middlesex; the son of pawnbroker George Arnold (1850- 18^th December1930) and Sophia Emily Jones (1850-1905) (12). In the 1901 census the Arnold’s are living at 44 Inglis Road, Brentford, Middlesex and Eric is 3 years old; the family are listed as: George Arnold, 51 (born St Pancras) and the head of the household, his wife Sophia, 50 (born Shoreditch), son Arthur G[eorge] Arnold, 20 (born Highgate1880-1930) ‘pawnbroker’s assistant’; daughters Norah K[atharine] Arnold, 18 (born Highgate1882, she married Arthur Edwin Walters (1882-1920) in Brentford in 1911 who died of the Spanish Flu. Norah died in 1961) and Olive G[eorge] Arnold, 17 (born Highgate 1884, died Ealing 1964 aged 80); son Arnold K[eith] Arnold, 13 (born Ealing in 1888, he married Adela Mary Townsend in Brentford in 1915; Adela filed for divorce in 1923 for ‘restitution of conjugal rights’. Arnold K. Arnold, an estate agent, auctioneer and surveyor of Orchard Bungalow, Ruislip, suffered fits and died aged 40 in May 1928 presumably after a seizure while riding his motorcycle), (13) and daughter Doris M[ary] Arnold who is 10 and born in Ealing in 1890, (she possibly married Basil Cartwright in Brentford in 1926). Eric is the youngest and the family also have one servant, a 37 year old governess named Edith Emily Tomlinson – George’s wife Sophia Emily Arnold died in 1905 and two years later George married the governess, Edith Emily Tomlinson, thirteen years his junior, born 1863 in Marylebone; one cannot help wondering if the flame of romance was not lit before his wife’s death! Another brother of Eric’s, John Leslie Arnold (1885-1939) is 15 years old in 1901 and away at school in Kempston, Bedfordshire (he died in Surrey on 5^th February 1939 aged 53). Ten years later we find 13 year old Eric in Blatchingham East, Newhaven, Sussex as a school pupil. Eric attends Tonbridge School in Kent from 1911-1916 (14) and wins a scholarship to St. John’s College, Cambridge in 1916 (BA 1921). His father George, in the 1911 census describes his occupation as ‘independent’; he is 61 living in Ealing with his 47 year old wife, Edith, daughters Norah 28, Olive 26, sons Leslie 25, a ‘pawnbroker’ and Arnold 23, a ‘land surveyor’s  assistant’ and daughter Doris 20, who works as a ‘Government clerk employed at Post Office Savings Bank, Kensington’. The family have three servants.

Just before his 19^th birthday Eric joins the Air Service on 18^th June 1916 (Number of R.A.C. [Royal Air Corps] certificate: 3422 obtained at Eastbourne on 15^th August 1916). Looking at his Air Officer’s Service Record we can find the following information such as his unit transfers: Crystal Palace (15.6.16) to Eastbourne, St. Anthony’s Hill, East Sussex (5.7.16), to Eastchurch, Kent (22.10.16), to Westgate, Kent [sea planes] (23.11.16) to Ark Royal number 2 Wing [sea planes] HMS Ark Royal was stationed at the port of Mudros (Greece) on this date,  (14.5.17) to Manston, Kent (6.5.18), to Dunkirk, France [sea plane base] March 1918. We can see that he is admitted to Chatham Hospital in Kent on 16^th November 1917 with an ‘old injury to left leg’; he is discharged from Chatham on 23^rd November and still ‘unfit’ on 18^th February 1918. He is ‘found fit’ again on 4^th March 1918. While he is stationed at Liettres air base (9-27 April 1918), Flight Lieutenant E S Arnold of 210 squadron was forced to land at Hesdigneul in France after a piston rod broke on his Sopwith Camel on 18^th April 1918; not long after this, Captain E S Arnold was stationed at Omer air base (27 April-30 May 1918) when he was wounded in a flying accident while on an offensive bombing patrol in France on 11^th May 1918, he flew into mist in his Sopwith Camel and crashed in a forced landing at Bollezeele, France, and was taken to hospital with a fractured skull; he is one of three pilots from 210 squadron to crash in fog that day. He is transferred to England on 1^st June 1918 and enters Hospital that day (possibly Hill House Hospital, Rye, East Sussex where he is sent sometime during the summer of 1918). He is in hospital recovering for 8 weeks and pronounced fit again on 20^th August 1918 and given ‘ground duties only’ (possibly working in Number 5 stores depot).

His service record states that he is a ‘very good pilot’ and a ‘good officer’ who was ‘recommended for promotion’ (19^th May 1917) while at Westgate and that he is a ‘good officer. Little experience in command.’ (30^th June 1917). In the Navy Lists of January 1918 – Royal Flying Corps (p. 577-9) on 1^st October 1917 E S Arnold is listed as ‘temporary, Naval Wing (RNAS) Flight Lieutenant’. The records also show that he is an ‘Honorary Captain’ on 1^st April 1918 and ‘Captain’ on 7^th November 1918. In April 1919 he is ‘transferred to the unemployment list’. His permanent address is given as: ‘Chromehurst’, 11 Gunnersbury Avenue, Ealing, W5, his father George Arnold is also at the address and named as a contact should Eric become a casualty; and his occupation in civil life is: ‘Scholar. St. John’s College, Cambridge, from 1916’. Following his time in the Air Service and as a scholar at St. John’s College, Eric works in banking and finances for N M Rothschild & Sons at New Court, St Swithin’s Lane, London until 1945.

During the Second World War Arnold joins the RAF as a Volunteer Reserve pilot and is listed in the London Gazette of 9^th May 1941 under ‘Administrative and Special Duties Branch: commission’ – Eric Stennet Arnold (63877) 11^th April 1941, ‘Pilot Officer on probation’. In the Air Force List for September 1941 (p. 747) he is a ‘Pilot Officer’. Just ten years later on 17^th April 1951 his suicide was a tragic end to a fine pilot of 210 Squadron!

DOROTHY L. SAYERS

Green wrote to Dorothy Leigh Sayers (1893-1957) in the summer of 1919 requesting a contribution to his projected volume on associated friendships – ‘Quorum’

Sayers replied to Green’s letter on 29^th August 1919 from Christchurch: ‘I have just received your prospectus and appealing letter – being at home for the moment, just before starting for France to be Secretary to the enclosed, which in your Schoolmastering capacity (you are one, now, aren’t you?) may interest you.

As regards “Friendship”, I must confess to being one of those cynically-minded people who consider that the least said on the subject the soonest mended. Few friendships among women will stand the strain of being romantically considered – all those I’ve ever watched have ended in dead-sea apples (the romantic ones, I mean), & I avoid them like the plague. Men manage better, I think, because most of them spend half their lives in Cloud-cuckooland in any case! Of course there is the amusing cock-a-hen friendship – but it is so very like a game of chess, & one can’t make literature out of KB to QR4 – at least, not the sort of literature you would care about! This is to explain why I’m very unlikely to write much about the subject. If I ever do, of course, I will send it to you with pleasure, but it would probably be in the strain of my contribution to this year’s Oxford Poetry (q.v. when published) –

Now scold me for blasphemies!

I shall look out for your first number, any how – ‘

In a postscript Sayers adds: ‘Dr. Bradford [the Rev. E E Bradford], who wrote “Passing the Love of Women” & “The New Chivalry”, is a sort of neighbour of ours, & says he knows your books & has corresponded with you. He’s an entertaining little crank - & rather a dear – but he can’t write poetry, can he? I had an awful time trying to tell polite lies – I can’t lie about verse.’ (15)

QUORUM: THE MAGAZINE OF FRIENDSHIP

The ‘Friendship’ mentioned in Sayers’ letter refers to a magazine which only appeared in one edition in June 1920 called ‘Quorum, the Magazine of Friendship’. Some of the contributors are well-known amongst a ‘uranian readership’ such as John Gambril Nicholson (1866-1931) who provides ‘Ad Amicum’ (p. 38) for the edition, Kenneth Ingram (1882-1965) of Charterhouse and the writer of detective stories, provides two works: ‘Allegory’ (p. 24-27) and ‘Class Hatred’ (p. 28-33) and there are two short pieces by Leonard Green – ‘In Hospital’ (p. 18-19) and ‘A Bubble’ (p. 20-21). Green’s friend, with whom he often went abroad on holiday and who also wrote detective stories, the Reverend Arthur Robert Lee Gardner (1889-1961) of Lincoln College, Oxford and curate of St Luke’s, Chelsea has ‘Victorian Ethics and Neo-Georgian Romantics’ on pages 10-17. (16) Dorothy L Sayers did in fact contribute two pieces: ‘Veronica’ (p. 22) and ‘Prayer to the Holy Ghost against Triviality’ (p. 23).

THE DISGRACED VICAR

Timothy d’Arch Smith mentions that Green appeared as a character witness in a case involving the Rev. A. R. Thorold Winckley who was accused of  an indiscretion ‘with a boy bent over a comic paper at a railway bookstall’ (17). 61 year old Alfred Reginald Thorold Winckley (1866-1951) of St. John’s College, Cambridge (matriculating on 17^th October 1885, BA 1888, MA 1893), (18) appeared at the Lincolnshire Assizes on Monday 8^th November 1926 and ‘pleaded guilty to 8 charges of committing acts of gross indecency and was sentenced to six months imprisonment’ by Mr. Justice Sankey who said 'he could not accede to a request to send the prisoner to a home. He must pay the penalty provided by the law, but at the same time the judge recognised that the case was a mental one and the time might come when such cases would be treated medically.' (19) D’Arch Smith goes on to tell us that Green was ‘reprimanded for a testimony, however well-intentioned, that came dangerously close to perjury’ (20). It is not known quite exactly how Green came to know Thorold Winckley but he obviously knew him well enough in some capacity to feel confident enough to be a witness as to his character and they both shared a common interest; Reverend Thorold Winckley gave his volume of ‘Men and Boys: An Anthology’ by Edward M. Slocum (1924) from his ‘private collection’ to Henry Spencer Ashby (1834-1900), the book collector, author and bibliographer for his erotic library (21).

THOMAS HILL GREEN AND A CROMWELL CONNECTION

Donald Weeks mentions in his biography of Frederick Rolfe – ‘Corvo: Saint or Madman’ (1971) that Green was a ‘nephew of a brother-in-law of John Addington Symonds.’ Having explored this connection to Symonds I have found that John Addington Symonds’ sister, Charlotte Byron Symonds (1842-1929) married the philosopher Thomas Hill Green (1836-1882) on 1^st July1871, in Clifton, Gloucestershire; (22) T. H. Green, who was a friend of J. A. Symonds, is linked to Leonard Henry Green through his father, the Reverend Valentine Green, the Rector of Birkin, West Riding of Yorkshire; Valentine, is the brother of Leonard Green’s Grandfather, the Reverend John Henry Bakewell Green (1817-1899) of Jesus College, Cambridge and Rector of Normanton-le-Heath, Leicestershire.

T. H. Green’s ‘paternal grandfather was a squire living at Normanton-le-heath in Leicestershire, who married a Miss Mortimer of Caldwell Hall in Derbyshire. (23) An ancestor of this lady, John Mortimer, whose first wife was a granddaughter of Oliver Cromwell, afterwards married a daughter of one of Cromwell’s officers, Colonel Sanders, and from her the Greens were descended. Mrs. Valentine Green (24) was the eldest daughter of Edward Thomas Vaughan, vicar of St. Martin and All Saints at Leicester; her mother was a daughter of Daniel Thomas Hill of Aylesbury, whose son, vicar of Chesterfield and afterwards archdeacon of Derby, gave the living of Birkin to Valentine Green.’ (25)

Leonard Henry Green died in Wandsworth in 1966 aged 80 years old and will forever be remembered for his small contribution to uranian literature and I feel there is much more to be said about Leonard Henry Green and that time will surely come in the future when perhaps his writing and his war-time work will be of interest to a new generation of enthusiasts!

NOTES:

1. Corvo: Saint or Madman. Donald Weeks. London. Michael Joseph Ltd. 1971. p. xi.
2. I established the connection that ‘Mary’ is Mary Mortimer Green, the daughter of Leonard Green’s brother, Valentine (1891-1971), born in 1921; she married Peter M. C. Wakefield in Cheltenham in 1958.
3. John Theodore Green is the son of the Rev. John Henry Bakewell Green (1817-25^th April 1899), Rector of Normanton-le-Heath, Leicestershire. He married Janetta Watkins on 30^th July 1847 in Daventry, Northamptonshire. Janetta died on 15^th June 1857 (buried on 18^th June 1857 at Normanton-le-Heath, aged 33. J. H. B. Green re-married on 3^rd July 1868, to Eliza Alethea Fell, in Coventry (Eliza died on 25^th January 1916 in Bristol).
4. Florence Anne Frances Christian, born in Cambridge in 1853 (Christened on 24^th February 1953 at St Mary-the-Less Church, Cambridge), the daughter of Samuel Christian and Frances Emily Christian nee Mellor.
5. Thanks are due to Mr. Michael Riordan FSA, archivist at St. John’s College, Oxford Archives for providing information on Green’s time at the college. In correspondence, Mr. Riordan went on to say that ‘it seems that he took a Pass degree, a type of degree that no longer exists. Unlike the Honours degree (which existed then and now) the student didn’t specialise in a single subject, but chose several different subjects to study. Green was at St. John’s from 1904-8. Our register states that he took his BA in 1910; I can’t be absolutely certain from the records in our Archive (as examinations were managed by the University rather than the colleges), but I should [think] it highly likely that he took his exams in the summer of 1908, but didn’t actually attend a graduation ceremony until 1910. The MA degree was a kind of upgrade after a certain period of time, so he didn’t need to be studying in Oxford from 1908-1914.’ (Michael Riordan FSA. Archivist St. John’s and The Queen’s Colleges, Oxford. 15^th July 2020)
6. see the Special Collections and Archives at the University of Gloucester which contains 13 photographs and two documents, donated by Green’s Niece, Mrs. Mary Wakefield on 17^th February 1988. [Series D388]. There is a photograph of Green in his Army uniform (Royal Warwickshire Regiment) on parade prior to WW1. (D388/2); the two documents (D388/5) contain biographical notes and an accompanying letter.
7. The Letters of T. E. Lawrence. Edited by David Garnett. London. Jonathan Cape. 1938. p. 93. Letter received on 14^th January 1911. Lawrence mentions his camera being stolen and unable to ‘take anything interesting’ [in a previous letter from Will Lawrence dated 18^th December 1910, he tells Green that ‘as Ned was away he had opened Green’s letter before forwarding it, and was sending negatives of photographs of Syrian castles for which Green had asked.’ (p. 92)]. Green had asked for advice from Lawrence in preparing lectures he was giving on the Crusades and Lawrence goes into some details before pointing Green towards Pirie-Smith as an authority.
8. T. E. Lawrence by His Friends. Ed. A. W. Lawrence. London. Jonathan Cape. 1937. p. 68. In the brief biography Green gives of himself he says that he is: ‘Secretary to Flour Milling, Employer’s Federation and to National Joint Industrial Council for the Flour-Milling Industry… Assistant Director of Milk Supplies, Ministry of Food, 1918; Executive Committee, League of Nations Union; Vice Chairman, National Industrial Alliance.’
9. The Letters of T. E. Lawrence. Edited by David Garnett. London. Jonathan Cape. 1938. p. 83.
10. The Golden Warrior: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia. Lawrence James. Paragon House. New York. 1993. p. 30-31.
11. The Quorum: A Magazine of Friendship. (facsimile edition with an introduction) by Timothy d’Arch Smith. Asphodel Editions. 2001. p. 7 (footnote) [original source: Pimlico News. 27 April 1951].
12. In 1881 George Arnold’s occupation is ‘miscellaneous salesman’ and the family are living at St. Alban’s Villas, St. Pancras; in 1891 he gives his occupation as ‘jeweller’ and the family are living at 44 Inglis Road, Brentford. George Arnold, pawnbroker and jeweller, had two shops, one at 213-215 Kentish Town Road, opened in 1884 and another at 228 High Road, Kilburn. George married Sophia Emily Jones, born 27^th December 1850 in 1879 at St. Pancras. Sophia was the daughter of John Jones, pork butcher, living at 98 High Street, Shoreditch. She died in Brentford in 1905.
13. The Scotsman. Thursday 24^th May 1928. p. 11.
14. The Register for Tonbridge School from 1900-1965. (ed Charles Harold Knott). Tonbridge School. 1966. p. 398.
15. Dorothy L. Sayers. A Literary Biography. Ralph E. Hone. Kent State University Press. 1979. p. 32-34.
16. Rev. Arthur R L Gardner also published: ‘The Art of Crime’. Philip Allan. London. 1931. ‘Prisoner at the Bar’. Philip Allan. London. 1931. ‘Tinker’s Kitchen’. Philip Allan. London. 1932. ‘Lower Underworld’. Quality Press Ltd. London. 1942. ‘Letters from Abroad (1924-1932)’. Privately printed. 1948.
17. The Quorum: A Magazine of Friendship. (facsimile edition with an introduction) by Timothy d’Arch Smith. Asphodel Editions. 2001. p. 6 (footnote).
18. Reverend Alfred Reginald Thorold Winckley M.A. was born on 9^th March 1866, the son of William Winckley F.S.A. [Fellow of the Society of Antiquarians] (1821-1897) and Frances Harriet Thorold of Flambards, Harrow on the Hill. He was ordained deacon (Rochester) in 1889 and priest in 1890; appointed curate at Christ Church, Battersea 1889-92; Pulborough, Sussex 1893-5; Buxton, Derbyshire 1895-1900 and in 1900, vicar of St. Mary’s Church, Ashbury, Berkshire. Chaplain at Aix-la-Chapelle 1905-08; missionary at East Angus 1908-9; in the American Church 1909-11. In 1911 he is curate at St. Mary’s Church, Sculcoates, Yorkshire; vicar of Newton-in-Cleveland 1914-17; vicar at Baumber with Great Sturton, Lincolnshire 1917-20 and vicar of Cadney with Howsham and Newstead, Lincolnshire 1920-26. His two elder brothers are also in the clergy: Rev. Charles Richard Thorold Winckley (1844-1941) and Rev. Sidney Thorold Winckley (1858-1937). Alfred died in 1951 aged 85 and was living at 3 Collingham Place, Earls Court, London.
19. ‘Prison for a North Lincs. Vicar – Mental Treatment Refused’ – Hull Daily Mail. Tuesday 9^th November 1926. p. 9 (also see ‘A Vicar’s Downfall’. The Gloucester Citizen. Tuesday 9^th November 1926. p. 8)
20. The Quorum: A Magazine of Friendship. (facsimile edition with an introduction) by Timothy d’Arch Smith. Asphodel Editions. 2001. p. 6 (footnote).
21. see The Private Case: An Annotated Bibliography of the Private Case Erotica Collection in the British [Museum] Library. (compiled by Patrick J. Kearney). J. Landsman. 1981.
22. Thomas Hill Green, born in Birkin, Yorkshire, on 7^th April 1836, educated at Rugby (1850) and Balliol College, Oxford (1855). Green is known for his philosophical thoughts on moral philosophy and social liberalism. He died on 26^th March 1882 at Oxford.
23. Thomas Hill Green’s paternal grandfather is Valentine Green, born 1767; he married Theodosia Frances Georgiana Mortimer (1775-1852) on 20^th July 1796.
24. Anne Barbara Vaughan, born 1830, Chesterfield. She married Thomas Hill Green’s father, Valentine Green (1800-1873).
25. Memoir of Thomas Hill Green. R. L. Nettleship (with short preface by Mrs. T. H. Green). Longmans, Green and Co. London. 1906. p. 2.

CHARLES EDWARD SAYLE

WHERE THE WOODBINES GROW

CHARLES EDWARD SAYLE

BY

BARRY VAN-ASTEN

                                                                                      

Be it mine to peruse

Old prints and editions;

Books our fathers might use

Be it mine to peruse.

Let others hunt news

And go mad about missions:-

Be it mine to peruse

Old prints and editions.

(‘Triolet of the Bibliophile’. Charles Sayle*)

DIM VOICES IN THE VOID

Charles Sayle, a minor uranian poet, scholar and librarian is known to perhaps a small handful of bibliomaniacs and collectors of obscure works by authors of a certain fin-de-siecle reputation who appreciate rare volumes of poetry and academic subjects; a man who left a wealth of unpublished diaries and worked diligently amongst his dusty tomes at the Cambridge University Library where he gave so much of himself. Like so many scholar poets such as A E Housman, A C Benson and H G Dakyns (1838-1911), he was a complex man with inner demons; the author and Master of Magdalene College, A. C. Benson writing Sayle’s obituary in ‘The Library (December 1924) says that ‘superficially he was regarded as a happy man, but underneath all this there ran an undercurrent of sadness and even dreariness… like one who had fallen more than once among the thorns of life.’

Charles Edward Sayle was born in Cambridge on 6^th December 1864, the youngest of ten children born to Robert Sayle (1816-1883), a retailer in drapery and haberdashery who founded a department store at 12 St Andrew’s Street, Cambridge in 1840 (1), and Priscilla Caroline Sayle nee Ginger (1824-1904) who was born in Buckinghamshire (2). The prosperous Sayle family had increased in number since Robert and Pricilla’s wedding in 1849 and the children sprouted forth thus:

Charlotte Mary Sayle born in1850 (Christened on 15^th November 1850 in Cambridge), she married a council clerk named Boardman Bromhead Dalton Sayle (1850-1916) in 1879 in Chesterton, Cambridgeshire. She died on 26^th November 1942; Martha Elizabeth Sayle, born 13^th September 1851 (Christened 31^st October 1851 in Cambridge); she died on 13^th November 1854 at three years old (she was buried on 16^th November 1854); Arthur Willis Sayle, born in Cambridge in 1853 (Christened on 1^st May 1853 in Cambridge), educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, October 1872 (B. A. 1876). He died in Shanghai, China on 28^th January 1878, aged twenty-five; Robert Henry Sayle born on 23^rd June 1854 (Christened on 9^th March 1855 in Cambridge), he died on 11^th December 1889 aged 35 in Kensington, London; Caroline Martha Sayle born in 13^th December 1855 (Christened 4^th May 1856 in Cambridge), she married Joseph John Brown in 1876 in Chesterton, Cambridgeshire; she died on 17^th July 1936; Frances Ann Sayle, born 19^th March 1857 (Christened on 29^th May 1857 in Cambridge), dying age 77 on 3^rd May 1934 (she never married); George Moore Sayle born1858 (Christened on 3^rd July 1859 in Norfolk), he married Emily Brierly Friend in Plymouth, Devon in 1888 and died on 17^th October 1935 in Bournemouth, Dorset; Martin Wellesley Sayle born 28^th July1860 (Christened on 14^th March 1861 in Cambridge) he died in Boston, Massachusetts on 19^th March 1914; Ellen Jane Sayle, born in 1862 (Christened on 13^th May 1862 in Cambridge), Ellen trained as a nurse and died in 1952 in Christchurch, Hampshire (3) and Charles born 1864.

Charles is six years old in 1871 and living with his Uncle John Sayle and Aunt Louisa in Southey, Norfolk. Uncle John is a 53 year old farmer; young Sayle’s older sister Charlotte May, aged 20 is also there; his mother and father and other siblings: Frances Ann, Martin Wellesley and Ellen Jane are at Trumpington in Cambridge. When he was about seven years old, Charles, the Sayle’s fifth son, went to live with his Aunt Elizabeth and his Uncle, the Rev. William Ballard Dalby (who married Elizabeth Susan Sayle 1825-1891 on 12^th June 1851 at Southey in Norfolk); they are living at Sharrington, near Holt in Norfolk where he is schooled by his Uncle in the rectory/schoolhouse; after Uncle Dalby’s death in 1874 (he was buried at Sharrington on 26^th September 1874), Charles attends Philberd’s School in Maidenhead, Berkshire and in September 1877, 12 year old Charles enters Rugby School where he remains until the summer of 1883.

He hears dim voices in the void

That call to his fine sense within:

He sees high visions unalloyed

With any mystery of sin.

(‘Tenui Penna’. 1888. from Musa Consolatrix. 1893)

While he is at Rugby, Sayle was the editor of the school paper – The Leaflet; Sayle’s friend at Rugby, John Haden Badley (1865-1967) who entered the school in April 1880 aged 15 (he left in 1884), (4) sent a copy of The Leaflet to the poet Lionel Johnson (1867-1902) with whom he was in correspondence. Johnson wrote to ‘the editor’ of the paper in February 1884 and in a letter to Badley dated 18^th February 1884, asks ‘I suppose you know C. at Rugby’… ‘I have received a most kind letter from him.’ (5) Johnson writes to Badley on 15^th June that ‘C.’s face I now possess, and his letters: of all the good your friendship has been to me, his friendship and brotherhood are the best.’ (‘Some Winchester Letters’. p. 111) and again to Badley in November – ‘C. must be a very pleasant spirit in this world: has written me quite delightful letters which I have answered at intervals.’ (p. 160); the romantic friendship grows as Johnson tells Badley (23^rd December 1884): ‘C.’s face is simply haunting: from one glance at its copy, I remember each portion of it, each expression of eyes and mouth – I must see him some day.’ (p. 165). During December 1884 Sayle was at Tenby and Johnson writes to him on Christmas Eve, saying ‘I want your “likeness” and must have it – pardon my importunacy.’ (p. 167) Sayle requests a ‘likeness’ of the poet too and Johnson replies to Sayle in Tenby on 29^th December that he is still awaiting the likeness and ends his letter: ‘Oh to be at Tenby / Now that you are there! but I can’t. Vale.’ (p. 170) Johnson got his likeness in January and Sayle got Johnson’s in March. Johnson’s correspondence to Sayle and Badley can be found in ‘Some Winchester Letters of Lionel Johnson’ (1919) published anonymously by John Francis Stanley Russell (1865-1931) who was at Balliol College, Oxford and with whom Johnson was having a close relationship; the letters from Johnson to Russell are also contained in the volume which discusses literary and religious matters as well as everyday sundries, mostly of a romantic tone, between the four special friends: Johnson, Russell, Badley and Sayle. (6)

When he is eighteen years old, his father, Robert ‘died in 1883, just as Charles was about to enter New College Oxford, having already sent three of the four older boys to Cambridge’ (7). He matriculates at New College, Oxford on 9^th November 1883.

‘Sometimes our lips shall meet’

(‘Four Seasons’. Bertha: A Story of Love. 1885)

Sayle published anonymously his first volume of poetry, ‘Bertha: a Story of Love’ in 1885 which apparently, as he told his friend, John Addington Symonds, is an account of a relationship with a fellow undergraduate for which he was sent down for the academic year 1885-86.

Lo! I the man fulfilled of sin and shame,

Blacked and deeper than a man should know,

Who would be perfect when he chanced to go

Among a people, timid, tied, and tame.

Lo! such am I: yet still forbear to blame

One who hath sunk within the mire so;

For I was e’en as they till soft and slow

The rushing wind swept by of Love’s strong flame.

For, other gods now banished, yet remain

Nature and Art and Love – these sacred three,

Holy be they, and blest the names thereof;

Though Nature’s self be cruel, full of pain,

And Art but handmaid of a mystery,

Yet Love is always perfect: - God is Love.

(Dedicatory Poem. Bertha. 1885)

The volume is in three parts: Love, Love Parted, and Love Dead and it tells the story of the relationship with ‘Bertha’ the recipient of the poet’s adoration through the joys and exhilaration of the first moments of endless love and we can picture the two clandestine undergraduates, young and simmering with romantic ideals, eager to impress each other and to possess the other in an intense devotion, so few can ever attain:

Meet me love, where the woodbines grow

And where the wild-rose smells most sweet,

And the breezes, as they softliest blow,

Meet;

Passing along through the field of wheat,

By the hedge where in spring the violets grow,

And the blue-bells blossom around one’s feet;

Where latest lingers the drifted snow,

And the fir-tree grows o’er our trysting-seat,

Come – and your love, as long ago,

Meet.

(‘The Trysting-Tree’. Bertha. 1885)

We do not know the real nature of the relationship and whether it was physical, but Sayle seems to have been a romantic idealist and overly sentimental – A. C. Benson paints a delightful description of Sayle in his diaries, saying that ‘Sayle rather horrified me. He is a great sentimentalist, falls in love with undergraduates, pets them, worships them, flatters them. Some of them he tames and civilises – some he spoils.’ (8) And so to the inevitable parting of lovers, as he says in his sonnet, ‘The Offering’ (II) where he is ‘fulfilled of sin and justified of shame’:

What made you kiss me then,

Brother and friend as thou art?

Ah! I kissed you back again,

And forgot what it was to part

(Through the silence we all but heard

The pulses in either heart).

(‘Parting’. Bertha. 1885)

Sayle had met the poet Ernest Dowson (1867-1900) while at Oxford. Later in 1888, Sayle introduced Dowson to his friend, Victor Plarr (1863-1929), in his rooms at Grays Inn and the two became firm friends. Plarr relates the incident in his biography of Dowson: ‘It was early in the year 1888 that my old friend, Mr Charles Sayle, that great introducer, first said to me: “There’s a man whom you aught to know, a young poet just down from college, a man exactly like J.” – naming a well-known writer; “only, if possible, more so!”’ He goes on to say that they ‘met in Mr Sayle’s rooms, those quaint picturesque rooms which were to be found in Grays Inn years ago, and have doubtless not been obliterated in that ancient place.’ (9) Apart from Sayle’s friendship and correspondence with Dowson, who on a visit to Cambridge with Plarr, ‘insisted on keeping an all-night vigil in Mr Sayle’s garden’, (10) and John Addington Symonds (1840-1893), he also enjoys a close friendship with the poet Lionel Johnson and a correspondence with the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams; and we are told, he even encountered the Great Beast himself, Aleister Crowley, ‘reciting his own poetry in a Snowdonian public-house’! (11)

In 1887 Sayle is awarded his B. A. and three years later in 1890 an M. A. from Oxford. After leaving Oxford in 1887 he is appointed Librarian to Toynbee Hall, a post he gives up in order to continue his private study. In October 1888 he is selected to re-catalogue the books in the 17^th century Library of St John’s College, Cambridge which contained well over 40,000 volumes (12) and took four years.

 Sayle’s second volume of poetry was ‘Erotidia’ in 1889:

EVENING AT KING’S CHAPEL

“For a scanty band of white-robed Scholars only”

Keep silence! From the chanting draw apart

And take thy seat where ends the monarch aisle,

And where are caught the glories of this pile

Most beauteously, with help of every art.

Forth from the gathering gloom past ages start

Till we feel placed within them for a while, -

Till memories forbid us to beguile

Our soul with sweetness or with sight our heart.

Here is no hint nor any need of change:

It is a dream of that which once hath been, -

Dream lasting still. No strife nor galling doubt.

Nothing doth enter here of new or strange:

Calmly we feel the silent peace within,

Forgetful how the tempest roars without.

(Erotidia. 1889)

Charles enters St John’s College, Cambridge on 4^th October 1890 and in 1891 Sayle receives his M. A. from Cambridge University. In December 1892 Sayle re-arranged and re-catalogued the Library of the Cambridge Union Society which contained 15,000 volumes. During this time Sayle is living with his widowed mother and his sister Ellen at 2 Harvey Road, Cambridge (his mother is still there in 1900 until sometime after from 1901 she is residing at 2 Brookside; in 1901 Charles is living at 9 Brookside.

In 1893, aged twenty-nine, he joins the staff of the Cambridge University Library as an Assistant Under Librarian and rose to become Assistant Librarian in 1910, a position he kept until his death in 1924.

THEO

Open this book where these letters stand

And write again in bold, round hand: -

‘He loved boys and thieves and sailors,

Servant of Thine, St Nicholas!’

(‘Muscovy’. Erotidia. 1889)

Sayle became friends with a fellow librarian at Cambridge named Augustus Theodore Bartholomes (1882-1933) or ‘Theo’ to his friends. Sayle ‘took immediately to Bartholomew, who joined Sayle’s group of “swans”, a group which later included George Mallory and Rupert Brooke, both of whom dabbled in same-sex relationships as undergraduates.’ (13) Bartholomew began his career at Cambridge University Library aged 17 as a Second-Class Assistant on 29^th January 1900. ATB, who later edited the work of Samuel Butler with Butler’s friend, Henry Festing Jones, entered Peterhouse College, Cambridge in 1901 till 1904 (B. A. 1904, M. A. 1908). Sayle seems to have become a little infatuated with the younger librarian who had delighted in the company of such luminaries as the novelist Forest Reid, poet and Venetian scholar, Horatio Forbes Brown whom he met in Venice; artist and writer, Ralph Chubb, poet and writer on homosexual themes, Edward Carpenter and the poet, Siegfried Sassoon, to name a few: ‘what is the attraction of ATB to me, as of so many before him?... it is this: I must have a playmate always.’ (Charles Sayle. Diary entry: 12^th February 1901. Cambridge University Library) Theo, like Sayle who was eighteen years his senior, was fastidious and precise with impeccable taste and they both shared a love of books and cataloguing volumes. While at the University, Theo became a member of Charles Sayle’s ‘Baskerville Club’, which was founded on 4^th October 1903 and the club was set up to encourage bibliographical studies. The first formal meeting took place on 28^th October 1903 and in a publication by the Cambridge University Press of 1904 titled ‘The Baskerville Club: No. 1. Handlist’ there is a list of its members: A. T. B. (Peterhouse College), A. F. Cole (King’s College), S. Gaselee (King’s College), F. J. H. Jenkinson (Trinity College), J. M. Keynes (King’s College), G. I. H. Lloyd (Trinity College), C. D. Robertson (Trinity College)  and C. Sayle. The club was dissolved in 1931. At the time of the Baskerville Club any romantic feelings Sayle had had for ATB had waned, perhaps on Bartholomew’s own desire not to be the ‘plaything’ of an older man and Sayle’s increasing suspicions and feelings of growing older in a world of youth –

‘ATB today gave me his first look of scorn… A few more and it will all be over.’ (Charles Sayle. Diary entry: 29^th April 1903. Cambridge University Library).

In 1913 Bartholomew became Under Librarian at Cambridge University Library, a post he remained at until his death in 1933.

BOURN BROOK: SUMMER

Still stream, from every toil and care remote,

Where the faint breeze has long since dropped and died,

And the thick shades that on thy surface float

Make it most sweet to linger at thy side;

Where, unafraid, the lapwing sounds his note

And, undisturbed, the wild fowl past us glide;

‘Tis half a sin to push on with our boat

And break the stillness of thy silent tide!

How oft, a boy, upon thy banks I played

And started at thy stillness – fancy-full.

But now these fancies into nothing fade –

I only know that thou art beautiful.

(from The Cambridge Independent Press. 1885)

SAYLE AND HIS CAMBRIDGE ‘SWANS’

After the death of his mother on 9^th May 1904, Sayle moved from 9 Brookside to 8 Trumpington Street, Cambridge, where he would host his ‘infamous’ evenings of conversation, music and literature; Sayle would entertain many young (and oftentimes handsome) undergraduates such as Augustus Theodore Bartholomew and the poet, Rupert Brooke of King’s College (matriculating in 1906). Sayle became infatuated with Brooke who one day went to see Sayle at his home in Trumpington Street; finding Sayle out Brooke made himself at home. When Sayle returned, ‘standing in my hall in the dark, and thinking of other things, I looked towards my dining-room, and there, seated in my chair, in a strong light, he sat, with his head turned towards me, radiant. It was another unforgettable moment. A dramatic touch. A Rembrandt picture. Life.’ (14) Another of the great ‘gods’ was the climber, George Mallory of Magdalene College (matriculating in 1905). Sayle was a keen climber and a founder member of the Climber’s Club of England and Wales, founded in 1898 (he provided a ‘Map for Snowdon Summit’ to the Climber’s Club Journal, vol III. No I. March 1901. a quarterly edited by E Raymond Turner) and no doubt had much to say to George and possibly went climbing together in North Wales. Sayle met Mallory on 7^th February 1907 when A C Benson took the young undergraduate to a dinner at Christ’s Church in which Sayle was one of the guests. Sayle was immediately taken by the charming Mallory and within days they were having tea at Sayle’s Trumpington home.  Two weeks later on 21^st February, George attended a dinner at the ‘University Arms Hotel which had been organised by Charles Sayle in honour of the writer and critic Charles Lamb.’ (15) At the dinner was Rupert Brooke and Maynard Keynes and another friend of Sayles, a young climber named Geoffrey Winthrop Young (1876-1958); Mallory and Winthrop became instant friends through their shared interest of mountain peaks. (16) Mallory, whom Sayle presented with an inscribed first edition of his ‘Erotidia’ on 14^th March 1908, and Brooke, would become known as his ‘swans’ for they were beautiful creatures. Another of the ‘swans’ was Geoffrey Keynes of Pembroke College (matriculating in 1906), brother of the more famous John Maynard Keynes, (Geoffrey Keynes published his account of ATB: ‘Augustus Theodore Bartholomew: 1882-1933’ in 1933). The great diarist, A C Benson draws a delightful sketch of Sayle’s home following his visit in August 1912, saying that ‘it’s an odd house, a kind of pussy-cat place. There are many books, the rooms are small but pleasant – and there are many photographs of children, boys, youths – all the object of Sayle’s innocent adoration. There is something a little silly about it, but still it’s a definite life on a definite method. Sayle is not concerned with what is thought of him and goes his own way in a cosy, old-maidish, sentimental way, full of adorations, without passion.’ (17)

Following the cooling of Sayle’s feelings for ATB, Sayle switched his attentions to a new ‘swan’ – Cosmo Alexander Gordon (1886-1965); they had met in November 1904 and Bartholomew had found his own ‘swan’ in Walter John Herbert Sprott (1897-1971), known as ‘Sebastian’ to his friends.

BYRON’S POOL

Here, where the lifelong splashing of the weir

Makes clamorous silence and all else is peace,

Save when the village youth, on its release

From long day’s labour, takes its pastime here,

With naked limb diving from off the pier

That stems the shallow pool; save when the trees

Murmur afresh touched by the summer breeze,

Or the lone church-clock sounds across the mere:

Here, basking on the summer afternoon,

One well might dream of now long distant days,

And mix old fancies with the pool and stream.

Here, watching through the copse-wood, where the moon

Rises and pierces through the night-drawn haze,

Life seems no more a waking but a dream.

(Erotidia. 1889)

On New Year’s Eve 1907, Sayle, ATB and Geoffrey Keynes got together at Sayle’s home, 8 Trumpington Street, Cambridge to celebrate the New Year, something which would become an annual event; Keynes tells the story in his ‘Henry James in Cambridge’ (1967): ‘towards midnight Sayle suggested that each of us should choose someone to whom he would like to send a New Year’s greeting in admiration of his achievements, to be signed by all three.’ (18) Sayle chose George Meredith, Keynes, being interested in science and medicine chose Elie Metchnikoff and Bartholomew chose the novelist Henry James. And so the greetings were posted and ‘the party broke up about 1 a.m. to await results.’ James was the only one to reply on 2^nd January 1908. The following year at their New Year’s eve party Sayle chose A E Shipley (elected Master of Christ’s in 1910), Keynes – Rupert Brooke and Theo: Henry James again! Another card was sent to James and he responded to the ‘Cambridge three’ again on 4^th January 1909 and agreed to visit Cambridge and his new friends. Sayle drew up the plan of entertainments and events for James who arrived in Cambridge on Friday 11^th June 1909 and was met at the station by Sayle, Theo and Keynes and taken by cab to Sayle’s home, 8 Trumpington Street where they had dinner and went to the Guildhall to hear a concert. James stayed at Trumpington Street for the duration of his visit. The next day, Saturday 12^th June, Sayle took James to King’s Chapel, Cambridge and to the University Library, (James is very impressed by St John’s Gallery). But things didn’t go so swimmingly! James was a little peeved at Sayle who attempted to finish his sentences for him with his own choice words and on Monday 14^th June they decided to punt along the river; Sayle accidentally dropped the pole on the great novelist’s head, luckily no damage was done but what a strange scene it would have been; they spent just over an hour on the river before going for lunch at Bartholomew’s rooms at Kellet Lodge, Tennis Court Road. James was scheduled to leave the following day, Tuesday 15^th June, but cut his visit short, leaving on the 4.35 p.m. train. The next day, James writes to Sayle from The Reform Club in London’s Pall Mall, thanking them all for their hospitality, saying ‘my three days with you will become for me a very precious little treasure of memory’ and he gives special thanks to the ‘gentle Geoffrey’, ‘admirable Theodore’ and a ‘definite stretch towards the insidious Rupert [Brooke]’; he even adds a P. S. to say that he left his pyjamas folded under his pillows and for the housekeeper to send them on to him! (19)

Sayle assisted with the research on the Milton Tercentenary and is credited in ‘The Portraits, Prints and Writings of John Milton’. Cambridge. J Clay by John Peile, Christ’s College, Cambridge in 1908. And as one ‘swan’ leaves another ‘swan’ enters in the form of a young Scottish undergraduate named Archibald William Robertson Don (1890-1916); Sayle was so enamoured of the handsome scholar that after Don’s death Sayle edited a biographical memoir of the handsome, heroic Scot, ‘Archibald Don: A Memoir’ (1918) putting much love and attention into the volume. (20)

Charles Edward Sayle died aged 59 on 4^th July 1924. It had been his fate, just as it would be Bartholomew’s fate also (21), to watch the young and vibrant undergraduates around the colleges as if they were immortal, always seeming youthful like the chrysanthemums, ‘pure white’ which ‘come once more… each year when the rest have passed / ye come again at last, at last.’ (‘Chrysanthemums’. 1889 from Musa Consalatrix. 1893) And so Sayle grew older and lonelier, depressed at not having found the one true love which everyone seeks, the one true love that never came – ‘I waited for one True Love. / I thought that I saw it pass: / But it fled unshriven like a vision damned / In an old magician’s glass.’ (The Ordination of a Greek Priest. Easter 1892, from Musa Consolatrix. 1893).

‘Nothing so sweet in all the world there is

Than this – to stand apart in Love’s retreat

And gaze at Love. There is as that, ywis,

Nothing so sweet.’

(‘Nothing so Sweet’. Bertha. 1885)

The obituary in The Times was kind to him, saying that his ‘life was devoted to the library and to bibliography’ and that he was a ‘fine example of the type of man who likes to catalogue things in the right order.’ It goes on to say that he was a ‘finished and accurate scholar, and no pains were too great for him to take in pursuit of his work’ and that he was also an ‘ardent supporter of the Cambridge University Musical Society and Musical Club. He wrote on music and fostered the taste in others at small musical parties in his charming little house in Trumpington-Street. He had a natural gift for winning the affections of young men, especially the more intellectual and artistic among them, and his Sunday evenings were a feature in the life of many a Cambridge student. Sayle was very fond of flowers – especially white flowers – and he sedulously cultivated his garden, hidden away behind his house in Trumpington-Street.’ And it ends affectionately: ‘Never very robust, he had a certain delicacy of mind and constitution. But his heart was in Cambridge and few members of the University had as great a knowledge of its intimate history, apart from the official, as he had.’ (22) Two other notable obituaries appeared in ‘The Library’ periodical of December 1924, one from Sayle’s friend and fellow bibliographer, Alfred William Pollard (1859-1944) and the other from poet, essayist and Master of Magdalene College, Arthur Christopher Benson who said of Sayle that he was ‘one of the most uniformly courteous men’ he knew.

And as the hearts of passionate lovers yearn

For dearest lips that hold Life’s biding grace,

So when I look, O brother, on thy face

I have no need of other love to learn.

(‘Continual Comfort’. 1888. from Musa Consolatrix. 1893)

A ‘MELANCHOLY FIASCO’

The funeral service, which took place at St. Benet’s, the oldest building in Cambridge, was described by A. C. Benson, saying ‘the coffin brought into the Church with a purple pall. A fussy old vicar for ever peering out from a pillar and signalling with his cap… Sayle was very particular about funerals and liked pomp. But this was a melancholy fiasco. He should have had a big company of bright boys (whom he loved best) to take him to his last resting-place, weeping for him and yet prepared to forget. Instead he had a band of undistinguished mourners and a crowd of rather dilapidated dons… It was horrible to think of S. cold and frozen in his box and his harmless, courteous, kindly innocent life over. He was always good to me; but there seemed nothing behind his little varnish of self-importance – no thought, no style, no enthusiasm, no loyalty even. As long as he had a pretty boy to pet, it mattered little. “He’s almost a religion to us”, as he said of Archie Don. He had no faith and yet no negation of faith – a very gentle, empty soul.’ (23) The poet A. E. Housman was also in attendance. Sayle is buried at Mill Road Cemetery in the Parish of St Andrew’s the Great, beneath the family granite chest tomb, along with his parents, Robert and Priscilla, his older brother Arthur Willis Sayle, his sister Francis Ann Sayle who never married and his sister Martha Elizabeth Sayle who died aged three years old. Charles Edward Sayle will be long remembered and appreciated for his tremendous work at the University Library, Cambridge, for his slightly peculiar and sweet nature and for his poems, which shall come as a pleasant discovery – ‘Ah! come ye back with pure delight! / And let me dream of you at night.’ (‘Chrysanthemums’).

AMOR REDUX

Dead love, new born, nor born to die again

Or, dying, nevermore to cherish pain; -

Nay, dying not, though time past come again.

Fast asleep, new waked, nor waked again in sleep,

Or, sleeping, nevermore sad dreams to keep;

Yea, sleeping now, sacring eternal sleep.

Fling roses, roses down before Love’s feet, -

‘After long years I shall be with you, sweet,’ –

As when we kissed, O Love, God’s shiny feet.

(Erotidia. 1889. [written 1888])

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Bertha: A Story of Love. London. Kegan Paul, Trench & Co.1885.

Wicliff: An Historical Drama. Oxford. J. Thornton.1887.

Iohannis Wyclif Tractatus de Officio Regis, now first edited from the mss. 4514 and 3933 by Alfred W. Pollard and Charles Sayle. Trubner & Co. 1887.

Erotidia. Rugby. George Over. 1889.

Letters Written by Lord Chesterfield to His Son. (edited by Sayle) Walter Scott Publishing Co Ltd.1889.

Letters, Sentences and Maxims, by Lord Chesterfield with a prefatory note by Charles Sayle and a critical essay by C. A. Sainte-Beuve. New York. A. L. Burt Company. (undated).

Sadi: Gulistan, or Flower-Garden: translated with an essay by James Ross and a note upon the translator by Charles Sayle. London. W. Scott. 1890.

Musa Consolatrix. London. David Nutt.1893.

In Praise of Music. (anthology, edited by Sayle) London. Elliot Stock. 1897.

The Art of Dining. Abraham Hayward QC. with annotations and additions by Charles Sayle. London. John Murray. 1899.

Catalogue of Early English Printed Books in the University Library, Cambridge, 1475-1640. Cambridge University Press. (4 vols) 1900-07.

Meditations and Vows, Divine and Moral. Bishop Joseph Hall. (edited by Sayle) London. Grant Richards.1901.

The Works of Sir Thomas Browne. (edited by Sayle) London. Grant Richards.1904.

Private Music. W. Heffer & Sons.1911.

Cambridge Fragments. Cambridge University Press.1913.

The Vatican Library: A Lecture. (given on 18^th February 1914). 1914. (see The Library, vol 6, issue 1. p. 327-343, p. 371-385. Published 1^st January 1894)

Cambridge University Library: The Beginnings. Cambridge University Press. 1914 (originally printed in the Cambridge Revied. 2 December 1914).

Annals of Cambridge University Library, 1278-1900. Cambridge University Library.1916.

Catalogue of the Bradshaw Collection of Irish Books. (3 vols) Cambridge University Press.1916.

Catalogue of the Early Printed Books Bequeathed to the Museum by Frank McClean MA FRS. [Fitzwilliam Museum Library]. Cambridge University Press. 1916.

The Ages of Man (edited by Sayle). London. J. Murray. 1916.

Archibald Don: A Memoir (edited by Sayle). London. J. Murray. 1918.

King’s Hall Books. Cambridge. W. Heffer & Sons Ltd. 1922.

NOTES:

* ‘Triolet of the Bibliophile’ by Charles Sayle. Book-Song: an Anthology of Books and Book Men, from Modern Authors. London. Elliot Stock. Gleeson White. 1893. p. 107. (the volume also contains Sayle’s ‘Demanding an Inscription in an “Omar Khayyam” to J. H. B. [p.106] and an inscription on the fly-leaf of ‘The Marriage of “Cupid and Psyche”’ [p. 105-106] Gleeson White also includes two of Sayle’s poems from ‘Bertha’: ‘Nothing so Sweet’ and ‘The Trysting-Tree’, in his ‘Ballades and Rondeaus, Chants Royal, Sestinas, Villanelles, selected with chapter on the various forms’. London. Walter Scott Ltd.1888. [p. 200] Sayle’s three poems: ‘Evening at King’s Chapel’, ‘Byron’s Pool’ and ‘Bourne Brook: Summer’ also appear in ‘A Book of Cambridge Verse’ by E E Kellett. Cambridge University Press. 1911.

1. Robert Sayle, a JP of Cambridge and China, was born on 22^nd February 1816 at Southey, Norfolk and died on 5^th October 1883 at Trumpington, Cambridge.
2. Priscilla Caroline Ginger was the daughter of Thomas and Martha Ginger. She married Robert Sayle in Hertfordshire on 25^th August 1849 when she was twenty-five years old. She died on 9^th May 1904, aged 80 at 2 Brookside, Cambridge.
3. In the 1901 census Ellen Jane Sayle is 39, un-married and her occupation is given as ‘Hospital trained nurse’; she is boarding with the Harvey family in Chesterton, Cambridgeshire. In the 1911 census, Ellen is 49 and still un-married; she is a ‘Hospital Nurse’ and she is visiting Epsom College Public School and Master’s House.
4. John Haden Badley (1865-1967) of Rugby School and Trinity College, Cambridge. Badley later went on to found Bedales School and claimed he had ‘tea with Oscar Wilde’ (see his autobiography ‘Memories and Reflections’. 1955). Sayle dedicated his volume of verse, ‘Musa Consolatrix’ to Badley in 1893.
5. Some Winchester Letters of Lionel Johnson (edited by Sir Francis Russell). London. Geeorge Allen & Unwin Ltd. 1919. p. 58-59.
6. John Francis Stanley Russell (1865-1931), the 2^nd Earl Russell and elder brother of Bertrand Russell. Educated at Winchester College 1879 and Balliol College, Oxford 1883, towards the end of his 2^nd year in May 1885 he was sent down for a month by Jowett because of some indiscretion; there is still some mystery over his intimacy with Lionel Johnson. Russell, known as the ‘wicked Earl’ was tried for bigamy in 1901.
7. Charles Edward Sayle. J. C. T. Oates. Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society. Vol, 8, no. 2. 1982. p. 236. The three older boys were: Arthur Willis Sayle, educated at Bury St Edmund’s School, matriculating at Trinity College, Cambridge on 12^th October 1872 (B A 1876); Robert Henry Sayle, educated at Uppingham School, matriculating at Trinity Hall, Cambridge on 22^nd February 1872 to study Law. LL B 1876, LL M 1881, admission at Inner Temple 12^th January 1874, admission as a Solicitor in April 1880, practicing at 35 Queen Victoria Street, London, and Martin Wellesley Sayle, educated at West Brighton College, Sussex, matriculating at Pembroke College, Cambridge on 10^th October 1977.
8. On the Edge of Paradise: A C Benson, the Diarist. David Newsome. London. John Murray. 1980. p. 247.
9. Ernest Dowson, 1888-1899: Reminiscences, Unpublished Letters and Marginalia. Victor Plarr. New York. Laurence J. Gomme.1914. p. 11.
10. ibid. p. 102.
11. The Books of the Beast: Essays on Aleister Crowley, Montague Summers, Francis Barrett and Others. Timothy D’Arch Smith. Aquarian Press.1987. p. 30.
12. The Library. Vol. 4, v, issue 3. Dec 1924. p. 267 (published 1^st December 1924).
13. The Book Collector, vol. 65 no 3. ‘Simple and Exquisite Tastes – A T Bartholomew: A Life Through Books’. Liam Sims. Autumn 2016. p. 395.
14. The Strange Destiny of Rupert Brooke. John Lehmann. Holt, Rinehart and Winston. New York. 1980. p. 28-29.
15. The Wildest Dream: The Biography of George Mallory. Peter & Leni Gillman. The Mountaineers Books. 2000. p. 56.
16. Geoffrey Winthrop Young (1876-1958), educated at Marlborough and Trinity College, Cambridge where he studied classics. Geoffrey, one of the infamous ‘roof-climbers’ of Trinity, who like Mallory and Brooke dabbled in same-sex relationships was elected President of the Climber’s Club in 1913. see ‘Geoffrey Winthrop Young: Poet, Educator, Mountaineer. Alan Hankinson. Hodder & Stoughton. 1995.
17. On the Edge of Paradise: A C Benson, the Diarist. David Newsome. London. John Murray. 1980. p. 292.
18. Henry James in Cambridge. Geoffrey Keynes. W. Heffer & Sons Ltd.1967. p. 7
19. The Letters of Henry James, (vol II) selected and edited by Percy Lubbock. London. Macmillan & Co. 1920. p. 131-133.
20. Archibald William Robertson Don (1890-1916), born at Broughty Ferry, Scotland and educated at Horris Hill Preparatory School; Winchester College 1904-09 and Trinity College, Cambridge 1909-1914 where he studied geology. He then decided on a medical career and became a medical student at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, London. He was appointed a Fellow of the Geological Society in London on 4^th December 1912. When the war broke out he joined the British Red Cross and went to France until he obtained his commission in December 1914. 2^nd Lieutenant Don of the 10^th Battalion Black Watch (Royal Highlanders) died of malaria in hospital in Salonika on 11^th September 1916.
21. Bartholomew records in his diary on 26^th May 1921, that he has ‘always had a horror… of hanging on – oneself no longer young – to the coat-tails of youth. A horror in fact of becoming a sort of pastiche of Ch[arles] Sayle.’ Cambridge University Library.
22. The Times. Saturday 5^th July 1924. issue 43696, p. 16.
23. On the Edge of Paradise: A C Benson, the Diarist. David Newsome. London. John Murray. 1980. p. 372.